1,145 Law Quotes

Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.

The whole Constitution has been erected upon the assumption that the King not only is capable of doing wrong but is more likely to do wrong than other men if he is given the chance.

Without the basis in written law, and without the basis in our Constitution ratified by the people, judges can't make laws. And if we accept the notion that their dictates are law, then we have not only submitted to tyranny, we have abandoned a republican form of government.

A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him.

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.

In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.

If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool.

We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the law has a moral foundation, and we must never fail to ask ourselves not only what the law is, but what the law should be.

It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty.

Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors.

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.

As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.

I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.

The case has been going on for so long that I've forgotten whether I'm really innocent or guilty.

What I need is a lawyer who specializes in the law of the jungle.

To the Tax Office: All is over between us. Please don't attempt to communicate with me again.

If you outlaw half a million people you make martyrs of them. For example, if you outlaw Robin Hood, it is all very well, but if you outlaw a whole group of people around Robin Hood, then Robin Hood and his merry men become legends.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

Je me defendrai mal: l'innocence etonnee Ne peut s'imaginer qu'elle soit soupconnee.

C'est un crime d'Etat que d'en pouvoir commettre.

Un monarque a souvent des lois a s'imposer; Et qui veut pouvoir tout ne doit pas tout oser.

Well I think we do have to define torture. One man's torture is another man's CIA's sponsored swim lesson.

Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities.

There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.

'Abu Ghraib is unbelievable in the innocent times of 1961. That we would torture people that way and on the instructions of the President of the United States and his highest legal advisers, torture is okay, they said. Go for it, fellas. If we can't renounce that and remove it from office, then the Constitution doesn't work anymore.'

It is one thing to assure a man the legal right to eat in a restaurant; it is another thing to assure that he can earn the money to eat there.

We cannot have a situation where people decide to sit in places not allowed and when police remove them they say no. We can't have that. That is a revolt to the system. Some are crying that they were beaten. Yes you will be thoroughly beaten. When the police say move you move. If you don't move, you invite the police to use force.

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court banned execution on retarded people and people in Texas are going, 'Shit, where's the fun now?' 'Cause they were zapping retarded people every other week, it was like 'Go sit on Santa's lap, Tommy!' [Electrical static] God dang! And I know the definition of retarded in Texas is pretty wide but... Its true! Even the Taliban is like, 'You people are crazy mutha-fuckers!'

Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.

The civil state of the nations, being merely and essentially civil, cannot (Christianly) be called 'Christian states,' after the pattern of that holy and typical land of Canaan, which I have proved at large in the Bloudy Tenent to be a nonesuch and an unparalleled figure of the spiritual state of the church of Christ Jesus, dispersed yet gathered to Him in all nations. The civil sword (therefore) cannot (rightfully) act either in restraining the souls of the people from worship, etc., or in constraining them to worship, considering that there is not a tittle in the New Testament of Christ Jesus that commits the forming or reforming of His spouse and church to the civil and worldly powers...

I observe the great and wonderful mistake, both our own and our fathers, as to the civil powers of this world, acting in spiritual matters. I have read ... the last will and testament of the Lord Jesus over many times, and yet I cannot find by one tittle of that testament that if He had been pleased to have accepted of a temporal crown and government that ever He would have put forth the least finger of temporal or civil power in the matters of His spiritual affairs and Kingdom. Hence must it lamentably be against the testimony of Christ Jesus for the civil state to impose upon the souls of the people a religion, a worship, a ministry, oaths (in religious and civil affairs), tithes, times, days, marryings, and buryings in holy ground...

Opinions offensive are of two sorts: some savoring of impiety, and some of incivility. Against the first, Christ Jesus never called for the sword of steel to help the sword of the spirit, that two-edged sword that comes out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus... The second sort, to wit, opinions of incivility, doubtless the opinions as well as practices are the proper object of the civil sword...

The civil state is bound before God to take off that bond and yoke of soul oppression, and to proclaim free and impartial liberty to all the people of the three nations to choose and maintain what worship and ministry their souls and consciences are persuaded of; which act, as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so is it of a binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common freedom and peace; however, an act most suiting with the piety and Christianity of the Holy Testament of Christ Jesus.

The civil state is humbly to be implored to provide in their high wisdom for the security of all the respective consciences, in their respective meetings, assemblings, worshipings, preachings, disputings, etc., and that civil peace and the beauty of civility and humanity be maintained among the chief opposers and dissenters.

One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government's primary concerns.

The decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.

Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now.

It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier 'separate-but-equal' decision.

I have never given a litmus test to anyone that I have appointed to the bench.... I feel very stongly about those social issues, but I also place my confidence in the fact that the one thing that I do seek are judges that will interpret the law and not write the law. We've had too many examples in recent years of courts and judges legislating. They're not interpreting what the law says and whether someone has violated it or not. In too many instances, they have been actually legislating by legal decree what they think the law should be, and that I don't go for. And I think that the two men that we're just talking about here, Rehnquist and Scalia, are interpreters of the Constitution and the law.

Islam is not a dull religion limited to the relation between man and his God, Islam is a political religion. Its politics are mixed up with its other rules and worship, and as the governments have political dimensions, Islam also has other political dimensions.

Enforce justice, do not justice only for others, seek it for yourselves as well. Justice is justice and cruelty and crime are cruelty and crime regardless of the source.

I mean, why didn't these morons leave New Orleans before the hurricane? I'll tell you why: because they wanted to rape and loot! That's just the way some people are! And if they're black - if the rapists and looters are black - it's not George Bush's fault! We've had these problems ever since the Emancipation Proclamation. Once the whites leave town, all you've got is overwhelming lawlessness. That's not racism, Mr. Snerdley; it's a proven, demonstrable fact. Have you even seen a ghetto in Greenwich, Connecticut? I rest my case.

Again, this is a willful and missing of the context of this program. We have discussed many of these phony soldiers over the course of the past few months. We discuss them constantly. MacBeth was just the latest. I have a press release here from the United States attorney's office, the Western District, State of Washington, September 21st of this year. Headline: 'Northwest Crackdown on Fake Veterans in Operation Stolen Valor - Phony vets scam more than 1.4 million and damage image of honorable veterans.

We have no intention of prosecuting Rush Limbaugh because lying through your teeth and being stupid isn't a crime.

This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors.

We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on September 11.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

If the history of wartime politics teaches us anything, it is that measures that seem just, or at least permissible, in a time of conflict, can have damaging and lasting repercussions.

Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this - their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government? ... We are realizing the paradox, 'that country is governed best which is governed least.' I no longer fear lynch law. Let the people be intelligent and good, and I am not sure but their impulsive, instinctive verdicts and sentences and executions, unchecked by the rules and technicalities of law, are more likely to be according to substantial justice than the decisions of courts and juries.

Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern - can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.

In this area of public policy alone, the accommodations that we have made to faith will do nothing but enshrine a perfect immensity of human suffering for decades to come.[2]

The court ignored the fact the right to live is a basic human right. The effectiveness of the tribunal is in its ability to rule against terror, and not only against those who fight it.

I am an Iranian. A descendent of Cyrus The Great. The very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2500 years ago that...he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it. And [he] promised not to force any person to change his religion and faith and guaranteed freedom for all. The Charter of Cyrus The Great is one of the most important documents that should be studied in the history of human rights.

I was arrested for selling illegal-sized paper.

I'm going to court next week. I've been selected for jury duty. It's kind of an insane case -- 6000 ants dressed up as rice and robbed a Chinese restaurant. I don't think they did it.

We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights.

One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.

The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law, as I have done, and as I shall continue to do.

I do not ask the clemency of the court. I came into it to get justice, having failed in this, I demand the full rigors of the law.

Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men.

But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law, declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months' imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing.

No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force.

Finally, it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.

For the Lawes of Nature (as Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe) Doing To Others, As Wee Would Be Done To,) if themselves, without the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like. And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.

I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law.

The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed [by legislation doing so] have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated.

Justice may wink a while, but see at last.

He who loves the law dies either mad or poor.

The judges need to be intimidated. They need to uphold the Constitution. (If they don't behave) we're going to go after them in a big way.

I have notified the speaker that I will temporarily step aside from my position as majority leader pursuant to rules of the House Republican Conference and the actions of the Travis County district attorney today.

The engineers are taking their stand on grounds of conscience...Conscientious objection to the law is not a criminal act. These people are our people and we should take a principled stand, together.

A deputy should have immunity, but this does not exempt him from criminal accountability.

Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver un coupable que de condamner un innocent.

Le divorce est probablement de la meme date a peu pres que le mariage. Je crois pourtant que le mariage est de quelques semaines plus ancien.

Il est defendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, a moins qu'il n'ait tue en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes.

I was only abused by lawyers twice in my life - once when I was sued by one and once when I hired one.

O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of Nature.

Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his convictions, was a direct actionist. Some thirty years ago I recall that the Salvation Army was vigorously practising direct action in the maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble, and pray. Over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned; but they kept right on singing, praying, and marching, till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone.